Body snatching
Body snatching is the illicit removal of corpses from graves, morgues, and other burial sites. Body snatching is distinct from the act of grave robbery as grave robbing does not explicitly involve the removal of the corpse, but rather theft from the burial site itself. The term 'body snatching' most commonly refers to the removal and sale of corpses primarily for the purpose of dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. The term was coined primarily in regard to cases in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. However, there have been cases of body snatching in many countries, with the first recorded case in Europe dating back to 1319 in Bologna, Italy. The first recorded case in China dates back to 506 BC, when Wu Zixu dug up the corpse of King Ping of Chu to whip his corpse.
Those who practiced the act of body snatching and sale of corpses during this period were commonly referred to as resurrectionists or resurrection men. Resurrectionists in the United Kingdom, who often worked in teams and who primarily targeted more recently dug graves, would be hired in order to provide medical institutions and practitioners with a supply of fresh cadavers for the purpose of anatomical study. Despite a significant decline in body snatching as a practice, there are contemporary instances of body snatching.
China
In some rural areas, ghost marriages are popular. When an unmarried man dies, his family will find a female corpse to bury him together with. As a result, female corpses are often stolen.United Kingdom
Before the Anatomy Act 1832, the only legal supply of corpses for anatomical purposes in the UK were those condemned to death and dissection by the courts. Dissections, the main way doctors aimed to gain understanding, required fresh corpses. Those who were sentenced to dissection by the courts were often guilty of capital crimes, such as murder, burglary, rape, and arson. However, in 1832, Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Anatomy Act 1832, which gave doctors and medical students the right to dissect donated bodies for education and research purposes. Although this act was created to stop the illegal tradeoff of corpses, it did not provide near enough corpses needed by medical schools annually, which could be up to 500 in number. This led to increased numbers of body snatching in the United Kingdom.Interfering with a grave was a misdemeanour at common law, and therefore punishable only with a fine and imprisonment rather than penal transportation or execution. However, dissection of these bodies and theft of items within the graves was illegal. This caused the body snatchers to only take the body and leave everything else behind in the grave. Medical students and staff did not ask where the bodies came from. The trade was a sufficiently lucrative business to run the risk of detection, particularly as the authorities tended to ignore what they considered a necessary evil. Body snatchers had a limited period in which they could dig up a body before it began decomposing, so that the body could be embalmed. They had to remain undetectable while exhuming the bodies and transporting them from the gravesites to the medical facilities.
There were several methods used in obtaining a corpse. Once such was digging down to the head-end of the coffin and breaking the top open, using a rope or hook to grab the body by its neck and hoist it out of the coffin. Body snatchers were careful to put any clothing, jewelry, and personal belongings back into the coffin before refilling the hole, and trying to smooth out the gravesite as much as possible to look undisturbed. What distinguished body snatching from grave-robbing was the practice of returning belongings to the gravesite before moving on. Removing belongings from the corpse would make them liable to prosecution.
The Lancet reported another method.
A manhole-sized square of turf was removed away from the head of the grave, and a tunnel dug to intercept the coffin, which would be about down. The end of the coffin would be pulled off, and the corpse pulled up through the tunnel. The turf was then replaced, and any relatives watching the graves would not notice the small, remote disturbance. The article suggests that the number of empty coffins that have been discovered "proves beyond a doubt that at this time body snatching was frequent".
Body snatching became so prevalent in the UK that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of someone who had just died to watch over the body until burial, and then to keep watch over the grave after burial, to stop it being violated. Iron coffins, too, were used frequently, or the graves were protected by a framework of iron bars called mortsafes, well-preserved examples of which may still be seen in Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh.
In relation to body snatching, murder for the purpose of selling the corpses to medical schools also occurred. The term "burked" was coined after William Burke, an Irishman, was found guilty of murdering and selling the bodies of at least 16 people. Burke would pinch the nose of his victims and lay on their chest so that there was no physical damage to the bodies. He was hanged and dissected for his crimes in 1829.
Many laws passed by Parliament covered body snatching or similar practices. The Human Tissue Act 2004 created the first overarching law that required informed personal consent to be needed for body or organ donation within medical facilities.
United States
Body snatchers generally worked in small groups, which scouted and pillaged fresh graves. Fresh graves were generally given preference since the earth had not yet settled, thus making digging easier. The removed earth was often shoveled onto canvas tarp laid by the grave, so the nearby grounds were undisturbed. Digging commenced at the head of the grave, clear to the coffin. The remaining earth on the coffin provided a counterweight which snapped the partially covered coffin lid as crowbars or hooks pulled the lid free at the head of the coffin. Usually, the body would be disrobed–the garments thrown back into the coffin before the earth was put back into place.Resurrectionists have also been known to hire women to act the part of grieving relatives and to claim the bodies of dead at poorhouses. Women were also hired to attend funerals as grieving mourners; their purpose was to ascertain any hardships the body snatchers may later encounter during the disinterment. Bribed servants would sometimes offer body snatchers access to their dead master or mistress lying in state; the removed body would be replaced with weights.
Although medical research and education lagged in the United States compared to medical colleges' European counterparts, the interest in anatomical dissection grew in the United States. Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York with several medical schools, were renowned for body snatching activity: all locales provided plenty of cadavers. Finding subjects for dissection proved to be "morally troubling" for students of anatomy. As late as the mid-19th century, John Gorham Coffin, a prominent aptly named professor and medical physician, wondered how any ethical physician could participate in the traffic of dead bodies.
Charles Knowlton was imprisoned for two months in the Worcester County Jail for "illegal dissection" in 1824, a couple of months after graduating with distinction from Dartmouth Medical School. His thesis defended dissection on the utilitarian basis that "value of any art or science should be determined by the tendency it has to increase the happiness, or to diminish the misery, of mankind." Knowlton called for doctors to relieve "public prejudice" by donating their own bodies for dissection.
The body of Ohio congressman John Scott Harrison, son of William Henry Harrison, was snatched in 1878 for Ohio Medical College, and discovered by his son John Harrison, brother of President Benjamin Harrison.
Large, gated, centralized cemeteries, which sometimes employed armed guards, emerged as a response to grave-robbing fears. Gated, "high-security" cemeteries were also a response to the discovery that many old urban and rural burying grounds were found to be practically empty of their human contents when downtown areas were re-developed and old pioneer cemeteries moved, as in Indianapolis.